Journal nocomment's Journal: The 4 ways to spend money. 4
While standing in the polls next week thinking "this would be ultra neato" and "I wouldn't mind that 1 cent tax increase for that" consider Milton Freidmans 4 ways to spend money.
http://www.allyourbasearebelongto.us/politics.php/2008/10/28/four-ways-to-spend-money
Milton Friedman (Score:2)
Now occupies Bolgia 10 in the Eighth Circle of Dante's Inferno.
The philosophy guiding the entire Chicago school of economics brought the current state of affairs about.
They produced the horrors of Chile in the 70's.
They either burn in the fires of hell, or have their places being warmed for them. This includes their lickspittles, Barack Obama and John McCain.
Klein on MF (Score:2)
Milton Friedman--and I start the book with this story--wrote a piece; it was one of his last pieces of writing, his last major policy recommendation. He wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal, saying that it was an opportunity, the fact that parents and teachers and children were scattered across the United States after Hurricane Katrina, an opportunity to radically remake the education system. Now, that--and, of course, turned into a voucher system.
Now, that neglect of public sphere that we saw in New Orleans is, of course, a national crisis. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that there is a deficit, an infrastructure deficit of between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion, just to bring the roads and bridges up to safety standards. And the solution, up until very recently, that was being held up, was public-private partnerships, was privatization of essential infrastructure. You know this in Chicago, because the airport is one of the ones on the block.
But one interesting thing that happened today is that the biggest--the biggest test case for infrastructure privatization is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which was on the verge of being handed over to a consortium of private companies on a seventy-five-year lease, and that deal fell through today. And I think part of the reason why it fell through is because one of the companies leading the consortium was Citigroup. And the idea of putting more essential services, more things that are far too important to fail, in the hands of the same people that have made such a mess of the financial sector suddenly seems like insanity. But on the other hand, the economic pressures on states, on the federal government, is only going to increase, right? Because it seems inevitable that those private debts are going to be transferred onto the public books. So, nothing can be taken for granted in this moment.
The other way where we--the other place where I think we see the legacy of Friedmanism in this moment is in the backlash to the Wall Street bailout, the backlash that essentially killed the bill in Congress, although it's clear that it's going to be revived. People got very, very frightened yesterday when the stock market had its worst day, and they called their Congress people with another message. And I just want to say, on that front, that it's easy to conclude from that that people are just untrustworthy, and they shouldn't really have a say in the economy, which is, I think, probably what Milton Friedman would say. And this was part of the impulse toward specialization and treating everything economic as hard science, because that means, you know that it's out of reach of democracy. It's not subject to any debate; these are hard rules.
So, penny for your thoughts. [democracynow.org]
I'm not so sure ... (Score:2)
For example, I'm less likely to worry about the cost, and more likely to worry about the content, when I
Health insurance (Score:2)
My wife's doctor recently made the comment that the local hospital charges $60 for a tablet of Motrin. Yes - a 100 count bottle = $6,000 in their eyes. The problem, of course, is the disconnect between service recipient and payer. Insurance companies spend someone else's money (your employer's), and make a tidy 10% over whatever their expenses were.
Obviously, if you were paying the bill out of your wallet, the hospital wouldn't dare charge you that much.
I'm not looking forward to a nationalized health care